even when waiting to see these patterns your literally watching the price go up and opportunity pass you by
This too...
It all boils down to a lack of understanding. If some "cup and handle pattern" or "wedge" could put money into anyone's pocket, then everyone would be winning right? But
everyone clearly isn't winning - just the minority.
How many times have you looked up bitcoin analysis, only to see some crazed sprawlings all over some bitcoinwisdom chart, with some guy explaining "OMG you see this guys? Look at that 'wedge' right there... you know what this means. Hold on to your seats, we're going to the moon" lol, then the next day the complete opposite thing happens yet people continue to search for these strange patterns.
The best advice I could give anyone is, price movement occurs due to the actions of a collection of human beings in the market. Therefore, the charts are merely a graphical representation of human behavior.
I know that I can predict the actions of someone that I know quite well, I know how they will react to certain things, how they behave under pressure etc, etc.. This is because I have 'long-term' knowledge of how this person has behaved in the past.
When you first meet someone, you have absolutely nothing to gauge this persons behavior making them somewhat unpredictable. You may use the slight information you have picked up within the 'short-term' to try and gauge their future behaviour, but you will often find your earliest assumptions about this person to be inaccurate.
This applies to the crypto markets.
Longer-term your strategy is, the better you will perform